In marketing we often talk about “low-hanging fruit.” This term refers to client engagement that is within easy reach and potentially very lucrative for our businesses. Existing clients are a great source of low-hanging fruit. Sadly, they are often ignored in favor of chasing new (and expensively won) clients.

I regularly meet clients who let low-hanging fruit perish on the tree. As result, they leave cash on the table with every campaign they send, making life more difficult for themselves.

Technology Is Your Friend

Sometimes harvesting low-hanging fruit is as simple as using the right technology. And sometimes this technology can be really simple.

For example, I recently asked a client why she insisted on having customers send her an email or pick up the phone to buy a service that could be just as easily sold via eCommerce. Wouldn’t it be easier to include a “buy now” button on her website and take payment straight away?

She had lots of reasons why, including wanting to deliver a personal service, not wanting to pay transaction fees and believing her customers didn’t want such a service, although she later admitted that she had never asked her customers for their opinion on the subject.

Remember: Every hurdle you make a client leap over in order to make a purchase is a potential roadblock. Yes, some people will be happy to pick up the phone or send an email. However, many others will view this as a chore and simply won’t do it. It’s also worth remembering that chasing invoice payments can add significantly to your working day. And remember not all invoices are paid on time (if at all).

False Savings

While an online payment system (and even a simple solution like PayPal would have worked in this situation) takes a small fee from each transaction, the cost of this would pale into insignificance for my client when she added up all the time spent manually processing orders, creating invoices and chasing payments.

And she would never know how much business she had lost because she made it more difficult to buy than it should have been.

Marketing Automation

Marketing automation technology like iContact Pro can help make the process of harvesting low-hanging fruit even easier. It does this by targeting the right client with the right information at the right time based on very simple business rules.

Imagine, no more shuffling spreadsheets, contacting lukewarm leads or risking client fatigue by bombarding them with the wrong message.

Also consider the constant flow of business generated by “on time” marketing. Compare this to the boom and bust of when you hit all of your clients with a regular (but not timely) email newsletter.

Once you’ve tried marketing automation, you’ll wonder how you ever managed to market your business without it.

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